


Thursday Kids Like To Cause

by apiphile, jar



Series: thursdayverse [1]
Category: Cobra Starship, Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance, The Used
Genre: Blood, Cage Fights, Fights, Gen, M/M, Mob AU, Violence, actually written by jess, co-writing, graphic gore, knife fetishism, protagonist is a psychopath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-11
Updated: 2010-05-11
Packaged: 2017-10-09 09:54:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/85923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apiphile/pseuds/apiphile, https://archiveofourown.org/users/jar/pseuds/jar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mob-flavoured AU. Part 1: Andy Hurley's glamorous life, everyone.</p><p>[NB: The series is co-authored, this part is by JAR alone]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thursday Kids Like To Cause

**Author's Note:**

> This part written by JAR.

"Christ hates baby killers!"

The woman's righteous sneer makes her pretty face ugly and mad, flips of curly hair flying into her snarling mouth and sticking to her teeth and lipstick. "Sir! Sir!" She calls, jogging after him along the quiet street.

Andy stops and lets her get ahead of him, her aggressively painted red mouth open as she pants a little out of breath. Andy wonders when he became a "sir", thinks he should grow his hair again, momentarily throwing practicality to the wind. Fuck knots and having to wash after every job. The nuts had never bugged him when he looked like a hippy vegan freak, flashing ink, beard and shoulder length mess of brown blonde hair, animal rights buttons pinned over his heart. Well. He's still got the ink. And the buttons. He glances down at his chest, glasses slipping down his nose a little. But they are kind of small. Andy adjusts his glasses and looks up at the woman, her smile as terrifyingly toothy and red as it'd been from a distance.

"Sir, this rally today is to protect the innocent lives of unborn children, and, if you'd like to take a flyer, you can see exactly how many children are being killed every week," She stabs a pamphlet towards Andy.

Jesus' serene face smiles up at him from the cover, giving Andy a look that says, hey, what do I care, I'm dead anyway, I don't have to hear the bitch. Or Andy could just be projecting.

Andy puts his right hand in his pocket and clicks his short fingernails against metal. He glances down the road at the shitty red Toyota that's still parked in front of the bar.

"Sorry, ma'am, I'm a firm believer in a woman's right not to contribute to the overpopulation of a corrupt and uh, dieing world. But thanks," Andy smiles up at the woman vaguely. Her aggressive cheerful expression collapses into an angry, vaguely confused scowl. If you can't beat them (it is broad daylight after all), confuse them.

"As long as you know you're going to burn in hell for all eternity," she spits, finally settling on all out righteous rage, and jogs back down the road to the small group of protesters.

"Oh, I know!" Andy raises his voice pointlessly at her retreating back, and checks the numberplate of the red Toyota again as he walks past it, even though Joe had confirmed it on the way past the first time and again before they'd dropped Pete off.

Andy walks into the shadowy doorway of the bar. It's dark enough inside that Andy takes a second to let his eyes get back to normal, squinting behind his glasses, rubbing his eyes and remembering there's no hair to brush out of his face a second after his fingers push non-existent strands behind his ear. There's a girl behind the bar with a rat on her shoulder, violating a thousand health codes and at least one law Andy just made up then about having to deal with something that cute while he's working.

"Hey," he says, and both girl and rat turn to face him.

"Hey, can I help you?" she says all in a rush of words and blushing, taking the rat off her shoulder and putting it into the wide front pocket of her apron, looking somewhat guilty.

"What's her name?" Andy asks, gesturing to her chest, where there's an extra lump apparently happy to stay curled up out of sight.

"Trix," she says, smiling and tucking hair behind her ear. After a moment, she adds, "so… what'll it be?"

"Oh, uh, nothing, actually, I just saw Brent's car out the front and I haven't caught up with him in ages, is he here?" Andy steps forward and puts his elbow on the bar, leaning in a bit, foot propped up on the guard rail at his feet. He almost feels like standing up on it, but decides to take the bar's ridiculous height with dignity worthy of a man of his stature, and not like, say Pete might.

"Yeah, he's just—" She falters, glances up at the ceiling, then makes deliberate eye contact with Andy, all quickly enough to lie through her teeth like she's pretty used to it. "He's talking to the manager about a job. He'll probably be a while, if you want—"

"Oh, yeah, that's cool, I just thought he might. Anyway, don't bother him," Andy says, eyes wide with exaggerated concern. Brent is not talking to the manager about a job. Brent is downstairs snorting, pissing and gambling a large lump of ill gotten gains away.

"Do you want me to give him a message?" she asks.

"That'd be a good idea," Andy says, "just tell him that Andy Hurley is looking for him, and I'll be waiting out at his car."

\---

Andy's blinded by the afternoon sun setting right in front of him. The darkness of the bar and the brilliance of sunset leaves him blinking blue-black bruises from his eyes. He walks back past Brent's car.

Across the street Joe is sitting in the drivers seat of the big white van they'd been provided, elbow pointing out the window, bobbing his head to whatever's on the radio, his longer than usual 'fro bouncing along in a mass of loose curls. Joe glances over at Andy and smiles what Andy assumes is supposed to be the kind of smile a stranger would give a passer-by on the street. A subtle acknowledgement, in Joe's hands, is eyes crinkling and scruffy stubble is shifting around a happy grin. Joe can't really do subtle. Andy points at the alleyway mouth with one finger, not lifting his hand from his side. Joe puts his fingers on his head at devil horns and points at the alley, then clasps his hands in prayer and points at the sky. Pete's in the alley, Patrick's on the roof.

Andy walks down the filthy concrete ally and stands against the wall next to the bar's back exit. He wrinkles his nose at the garbage-puke-piss smell, the death smell that wafts around every time the breeze stirs. The ground is strewn with paper and cigarette butts, and shattered liquor bottles glitter on the asphalt, poisonous remains of poisonous products. Andy puts his hands in his pockets and tries not to lean anything lower than his shoulders against the wall that's probably covered in piss.

He looks up at the top of the building opposite, cupping his hand over his eyebrows against the glare, but unsurprisingly doesn't catch a glimpse of Patrick. Patrick's got the sun at his back and no need to be seen.

The door slams open to Andy's right, the air wafting more of the ally stink up into Andy's face (why they send HIM into the bar, makes no damn sense. It's been years and Pete never tires of fucking with Andy because he's 'edge). Brent steps through the doorway, wincing at the noise he'd obviously not meant to make, sunlight blind coming out of the dim bar. His fast, dark eyes dart from one side to another as they adjust and it actually takes him a beat before he realises Andy is right there waiting for him, and not standing by his shitty red Toyota out the front. Brent breathes out like someone's thrown a brick at his chest. Brent's not smart, he's painfully easy he was to manipulate, and Andy's not even touching on how quickly they'd found him when he should have been miles away by now. But he's not exactly stupid either, he's got enough instinct to be scared, and Andy doesn't underestimate instinct or fear.

"Oh, hi Brent," Andy says, not unpleasantly. He'd never been friends with Brent, but the scene they ran in was pretty incestuous and there weren't actually that many killers for hire that Andy didn't at least know by reputation. Brent's was… not stunning. Andy was almost sorry for him, he'd been dropped in so deep.

"So anyway," Andy says, as if Brent's done anything more than stand there chest heaving, unblinking, tensed to bolt, "you seem surprised to see me. Come on, you knew this would happen at some point. I even let you finish up downstairs. Let it never be said I'd deny a man his last cigarette or whatever it is you were poisoning your body with down there."

"Jesus man, no, I—" Brent takes a breath.

"Blink, man," Andy says, helpfully, taking his left hand out of his pocket and flapping it open and closed in demonstration.

"I can't, man, there's… dude, I can't _tell you_ anything! Please, I'll give you what I just won inside, it's like two thousand bucks and you _know_ I'm good for more."

Andy shakes his head.

"Even if I cared about the money, man, what can I say? That's not even a shitty payday for me, you know?" Andy takes his right hand out of his pocket, hand fisted around the four inches of his closed knife. The metal is blood warm. Andy can't remember the last time it was cold when he held it, it's practically part of his skin. It might as well have its own circulation, his veins and arteries grown into it, like vines wrapped around a tree they need to see sunlight.

Brent's sweaty pale face drops to look at the ground, briefly, as Andy pushes off the wall and the air shifts around them both. Brent wipes his hands on his thighs and Andy watches the split second where Brent's muscles tense up and knows Brent's going to run. He's stupid enough not to realise Andy's not alone, that Pete's one way and Patrick would pick him off from miles away, with a clean line of sight. Or maybe smart enough to know that one in a million is still a chance. Andy can respect that. Brent explodes away from the doorway, up the alleyway away from Pete, knowing on instinct or intuition which way to go. He's ducking and weaving like a jackrabbit trying to put a fox on the wrong foot.

Andy takes a step off the wall, a quick breath to centre himself, and pushes the metal switch on the knife, flicking his wrist so the blade swings out. The blade locks open with a click and flies into the back of Brent's knee in one motion. It lands true with a strangled yelp from Brent that's cut off abruptly as his jaw smacks into the ground with an audible click. It sounds to Andy like maybe he's snapped a tooth.

Brent moans and curls in on himself on the dirty ground, eyes screwed shut, hands cupping his knee.

Andy glances up at the sky and gives the thumbs up, knowing Patrick will catch his signal. He kicks Brent over onto his stomach and bends to twist his arms behind his back, holding them up high enough to strain and jamming his knee into Brent's lower back, Andy's kneecap cartilage clicking back and forth, grinding across Brent's spine as he pushes down hard.

"Nice one, man," Andy hears from behind him. "Not quite Patrick at that, but you hit it dead right, didn't even," Brent jerks and swears violently underneath Andy, and Andy readjusts his grip quick as he can, nearly losing his grip on one of Brent's wrists. "Didn't even knick anything that'll bleed him out," Pete says. He's pulled Andy's knife out of the back of Brent's knee.

"Thanks, man," Andy says, pleased. Having his technique compared to Patrick's would be a compliment in itself, but coming from Pete, it's like having his technique compared to God's.

Andy shifts a bit, popping his knee back-forth over Brent's spine. Brent breaths harshly, still shocked quiet. Joe should be coming in any second, and Andy isn't comfortable waiting here while Brent gets blood all over the. Pete does something that makes Brent flinch and groan. At least he isn't yelling.

"Oh, shut up," Pete says, talking down at Brent, "man, I think Andy weighs fucking less than me." Andy can practically hear Pete's eyes rolling, and he glances back over his shoulder, neck pulling uncomfortably, to see the source of the rhythmic flinching Brent's doing. Pete's tapping out in light little kicks against Brent's injured leg, making him jump every time Pete's toes connect.

Andy's about to attempt to get Pete to knock it off before Brent realises he can use his voice still, when the van screeches into the alleyway. Joe's reversing way faster than necessary, there's barely enough room for the side mirrors to clear the bricks, but of course, Joe can't resist driving like a maniac.

"Show off," Andy says, smiling. Joe's good enough to pull it off. Well, he is now, anyway. Andy remembers their multitude shitty cars and vans that looked like they'd been used for crash testing before Joe was through with them.

Pete barks out a loud laugh and opens the van's back doors.

There are benches along either wall leaving a long space down the middle, the floor covered in easily cleanable rubber mats. Pete leans forward and gropes under one long seat for the roll of thick, silver tape. Pete's giving Andy a view of about six inches of Decepticon print underwear and ass crack in the process, because Pete couldn't wear a pair of jeans that covered his ass if that was what he was paid for. After all this time, Andy would have though it would be less disgustingly distracting.

"You should have been a plumber, man," Andy says, readjusting his grip on Brent's arms. They usually pick up the fight when the restraints come into view.

Pete turns around and rips a long strip of tape away from the roll, biting his toothy smile onto it to tear the strip off.

\---

Pete is fucking around on the ride back, standing with one foot on either bench in the van's backseat, legs stretched wide. He's bent nearly double under the low ceiling, leaning into the front seat between Patrick and Joe. He's still has Andy's knife in hand, and Andy keeps his eyes on Pete's hands, watching him flicking Andy's knife open, then closed and spinning it over one his knuckles fumblingly as the van jolts around.

"Do you think I could learn to swallow knives?" Pete asks, abruptly, flicking the knife open again and eyeing it critically.

"No," Patrick says, from the front.

"Uh, not mine, man," Andy offers, and feels the urge to take his knife back spike irrationally. He trusts Pete, but that's his knife. He doesn't take it back, curious how long he can let his stomach turn and his eyes stay glued to it before he has to have it back, heavy in his pocket.

"Dude, that's swords," Joe says, and shakes his curly head, banging his hand on the wheel.

There's a beat where Pete hangs his head down between his shoulders, one hand resting on either front seat, knife swaying and dangerous between his loose fingertips.

"Do you think _you_ could?" Pete asks, turned towards Patrick in the passenger seat, pointing at him with the knifepoint, ignoring Joe's logic.

"No," Patrick says.

"Do you think Joe could?" Pete asks.

"No," Patrick says, sounding sweeter and more gentle with every question, which from long experience Andy is sure means he's going to hurt Pete soon.

"Do you think thaaaat Andy—" and Andy saves Patrick the trouble by reaching out and shoving the back of Pete's knee hard, so Pete collapses in a graceless tangle of limbs and laughter. Andy watches as his knife slips out of Pete's hand clatters under a seat, still open.

"Thank you, Andy," Patrick says, turning around smiling at Andy, then down at Pete, cramped awkwardly where he'd landed in the space between the benches, bent knees either side of Brent's frowning, pale face.

"You're welcome, Patrick," Andy says, affecting a really horrible English accent. "Think nothing of it."

"Patrick!" Pete says, getting up and jamming his knees into Brent's sides and putting a foot on his face as he rights himself. "Paaaatrick, Andy hit me!" Pete whines loudly, putting on a ridiculously obnoxious tone Andy thinks is probably accurate to what a three year old Pete sounded like. "I didn't even do anything. Would I do anything?" Pete pouts, poking out his lower lip and sounding disgustingly cutesy. Pete does his absolute worst innocent little boy impression as often as he possibly can. It's kind of impressive.

"If you kids don't pipe down I'm turning this car around and no one gets to go to Disneyland and meet the pretty princesses, you hear me?" Joe yells from the front seat, snickering the last bit. "No tiaras for ANYBODY."

"But Mommy! You promised I could have a princess hat!" Pete gets out through a braying laugh.

"But he started it, Mom," Andy plays along, smiling.

"Don't think you're too old to spank," Patrick says, deepening his voice.

Pete laughs harder and actually climbs over into the front seat of the van, making Joe swerve them a little when he cops Pete's foot in his shoulder and can't stop laughing. Pete ends up in Patrick's lap, feet against the door and back to Joe, arms around Patrick's neck. Probably crushing him. Against odds, Patrick doesn't actually attempt to cram Pete into the space at his feet. Andy figures he's in a good mood, despite Pete riding on the upswing of a manic mood in a particularly obnoxious fashion.

"Promise?" Pete says, mouth right up against Patrick's ear, looking over his shoulder. Andy catches Pete's gaze and rolls his eyes and makes a "ew" face.

"Dude, shut up," Joe says from the front. "I can still turn this car around!" He snaps in his motherly voice.

Pete pokes out his tongue, then laughs against Patrick's neck and licks him, wet and showy. There's a pause before Pete jerks abruptly tense and mumbles something resembling "Jesus Christ." Andy hopes whatever Patrick did hurt. Pete turns his head back into Patrick's neck, face and body still.

"Incest is wrong, man," Joe says, sounding utterly serious.

Pete snickers.

"Seriously, Pete, if you _ever_ call me Daddy, I will fucking kill you," Patrick says, deadpan.

"How did you even know?" Pete asks, wide eyed and smiling, not moving his noce from against Patrick's skin.

There's a relaxed silence for a while, Brent's harsh breathing through his nose a kind of white noise in Andy's ears he finds not calming, but steadying.

"You threw my knife, man," Andy says towards the front seat. Pete's lucky it didn't land point up in something vital of Brent's, really. Not that it was entirely Pete's fault, but, well, totally Pete's fault. Andy gropes under the seat and feels paper crinkle, then something wet and sticky, and they're only had the van since they got there. Not even a week. That's just not right. He gropes kind of apprehensively, the corner of his top lip lifted in digust, until Joe stops at an intersection and the knife bumps along the floor and smacks into Andy's hand, blade digging in enough Andy can feel the paper thin sharp edge along his palm.

Andy picks it up by the blade and flicks it shut. He looks down at Brent, the silver tape over his mouth misting under his nose with harsh snorting breathes that get more desperate in the silence. Andy leans down and flicks his knife open next to Brent's cheek, slips it not particularly gently under the tape that's covering his mouth, cutting through it and letting it slide off, easily falling away, slick with spit and sweat. Brent doesn't make a sound. He's totally perfect, Andy thinks, he's going to be a little bit of a challenge, but his sweat is spilling too fast and his heart is pumping too hard for secrets to stay his for long.

"Sorry, man," Andy says, "Pete _always_ tapes too hard." Which is true. When Pete puts someone under wraps, they don't get out without losing a limb or something. Joe's really better in that department. Andy rips another length off of tape off the roll and retapes Brent's mouth, slicing the end free of the roll with his knife point right under Brent's right eye. Even though it wasn't the point, Andy still leaves the tape a little looser than Pete had it.

Andy looks out at street racing up through the windscreen, white lines flickering under the van's headlights. As they round the last corner to the Way's hotel, the entrance of the underground parking garage looms large like a giant mouth, two little gargoyles perched over the corners like eyes. It's gotten dark on their way, and the building is huge and imposing in the gloom. Details were apparently everything to Ma Way, and not even the parking was allowed to escape her aesthetic: a gothic, gaudy, Italian mixture that was unique to their hotels—for a fucking excellent reason, Andy thought, half-smiling at the pair of hideous gargoyles before they passed under their watchful eyes. During the day the overall impression the building gives is cheesy and camp, but in the dark the architecture shone, staring down anyone approaching the building.

If you asked someone staying in a Way hotel what they first thought of when they thought of the hotels, they'd probably mention the Ma Way's designs, the architecture and black-on-red interiors that were the buildings standards. Andy's view of Way hotels was somewhat different, minds eye conjuring up other rooms also designed by the matriarch. Underground levels with more practical décor, durable black metal chairs, twenty foot high cages over hard floored boxing rings, chainlink, concrete and steal. Signature Way hotel for Andy, places he'd seen more than the upper levels. Until this week, anyway.

The Way family owns a lot of things, but hotels are their biggest face business. Their up-market chain of hotels dot the country like the tips of a hundred icebergs, underneath their distinctive architecture, underneath weird gargoyles and expensive marble, expansive ballrooms and shining black grand pianos, there were the businesses that kept the Way family rich.

Weapons were the Way's thing. Rumours had them handing out handguns to any wannabe that wanted one, to selling enriched uranium to terrorists from around the globe. Andy was inclined to believe they operated somewhere closer to the middle ground between those two ideas. He'd been around the Way's business for years, never quite in their inner circle, even when he'd been closest to them, but he'd seen enough to make an educated guess.

It was always a bad idea to underestimate the Ways, though, educated guess or not. Last year, Patrick had mentioned he'd always wanted to mess with a RPG, just thrown it out there as Patrick did, coveting weapons technology he'd never get his hands on with a wistful smile on his face. Pete had disappeared, talking to Mikey Way on his sidekick, and two weeks later there was a huge wooden box in their living room with a maniac grinning Pete sitting on top, a tiny purple bow stuck in his hair. The bow had ended up stuck on Pete's crotch after Patrick had opened his present, and it was a sign of Patrick's love of anything projectile weaponry that when Pete waggled his eyebrows and pointed down at his crotch laughing and leering, Patrick hadn't actually slipped a knife off his back and used the bow as target practice.

The point was, the Way's main thing was weapons, and they were good at what they did.

The other underground side of the Way's business was more Andy's taste, and it was where he'd worked with them. Before he had Patrick, Joe and Pete. They Way's ran fights, and with them, betting. They ran everything from bare-knuckle fights to matches where only one person walked out of a cage. Rivals brought fighters to the Way's to settle things, sometimes, man against man for territory or to settle deals. Most of the time, though, it was dirtier than that, sometimes guys went in not comprehending exactly what they'd signed up for. Andy never liked those guys. It was maybe why he got along with Pete on some level—Pete had been in the cages more than anyone Andy knew of. Anyone who was still breathing. Since Patrick, though, Pete hadn't gone in, he'd stuck to the ring, where everyone walked (or was carried) out breathing. Pete got it.

Andy got it, and he'd never put set foot in the ring. Andy had met a lot of people from playing vet at the fights (you're a vet because you either to patch the guys up or you put them down), people from Bob Bryar to Pete himself.

These days, the Way family also did the political thing, had connections everywhere ensuring they operated relatively untouched by the law. The politics were relatively new, more sophisticated now, and Andy would bet this was mostly Toro's doing. Andy had never met a guy who was so old fashioned mob, polite and respectful and the kind of guy that'd make sure you'd had that last cigarette, last meal, last request, before he blew your brains out and buried you under the foundations of one of his buildings. He came from old fashioned mob, and from what Andy knew he was perfectly in the mould of the Toro empire. An empire that was barely a separate entity to the Way's and at this point. Gerard's doing, as he and Toro had been friends for years, both sons of big families, they'd probably been having playdates since before they were born.

Ma Way had been a terrifying presence. Andy had only met Gerard a handful of times, but already preferred his strange presence to hers, Gerard could fill up the room but never felt stifling. Andy couldn't say he missed her, from seeing her preside over fights, sitting up-front with her teased blonde hair crowning her head and her black talons, the crow like cocking of her head like she was deciding the best way to rip you open and get out all the sweet bits. He wouldn't say he was glad to have her gone (not out loud, anyway), but she was certainly less awesome to work for. Not that they worked for Gerard—except technically, he supposed they did. It was more like a payed alliance, an alliance with benefits. They'd chosen to go to Gerard when the shit hit the fan along with Ma Way's brains, but so had a lot of people. Maybe even enough for Gerard to get his feet under him and keep the Way family running.

Andy looks down at Brent. His face sweating around the tape that's still cutting into his cheeks a little, despite the loosening Andy's done earlier, his dark eyes scrunching shut as they ease over a speedbump and his head hits the van's floor with a thump.

This insignificant, amateur killer, sweating on the dirty floor of their van had been the first wolf sent in to nip at the heels of the newborn head of the Way family, to test Gerard's strength. Brent and his partner had been sent to get rid of Gerard while he was stumbling around on wobbly calf-legs, all bloodstained and newborn and smelling like dinner. The possibilities of _who_ sent them were practically endless, so Andy doesn't hazard a guess. After all, he'll get his answer (Gerard's answer), soon enough.

Brent was the first wolf, but he wouldn't be the last. So they were staying in the building that was swallowing the van down, Way hotel numero uno, the first in the chain, built years before Gerard Way had even been born. More a home and a headquaters than a hotel, it was only ever open to the most exclusive, invited guests and half the floors were permanently taken up by the Ways and their entourage.

Andy lets himself rock with the bumping of the van over the carpark speed humps, and thinks about how he's going to do this with Brent. His hands hang loosely between his swaying knees, flicking his knife in out in out in.

\---

Bob and Frank are waiting for them in car park. The tyre and petrol garage smell leaks into the van, replacing the fresh afternoon air. Brent's shivering violently—maybe even partially from the cold. Andy pushes open the back doors of the van, bracing for the cool air.

"Hey," Bob says, nodding at Patrick and waving a tiny wave. Patrick walks over to stand near Bob, smiling his genuine smile, the one that makes him look as young as he is and ten times less dangerous. Sometimes Andy forgets with Patrick, until he laughs or blushes or really lets Pete get to him, that Patrick is younger than them all.

Andy thinks it's kind of apt that Bob and Patrick knew each other, before any of them had met Patrick. Andy thinks they should start a scary motherfuckers club— because Patrick is Patrick, and then there's Bob, in this hotel of full of wolves, Andy was fairly sure if he had to pick one person not to ever pick a fight with, it'd be Bob. Sure, he'd never actually seen some people here in action. Frank for instance. But he'd seen Bob and he'd prefer to keep his insides on the inside and his face somewhat symmetrical.

Bob settles back against a column, and Andy turns back around to Joe, ready to get this shit over with and get Brent inside.

Frank fidgets his way up into Patrick's face, full of a restless energy that reminds Andy of Pete when he's on an upswing. Frank is an unknown for Andy, he wasn't here when Andy was vetting fights. A lot has changed since then. Bob had been a fighter then, too, nothing more, not any closer to the Way family than Andy had been. Everything was different, and it made things tense, some of the time. It was half homecoming, half falling into a pit of vipers.

"Nice," Frank says, pointing to the scar on Patrick's eyebrow, inked, knuckle scarred finger dancing a fraction away from prodding Patrick in the head or knocking his hat askew.

"His halo fell down," Pete says, miming slicing his forehead open with an invisible halo as he inserts himself between Frank and Patrick, as though the space there was enough for anyone normal to stand comfortably, and not actually small enough that Pete and Frank could chip each others bared teeth with one wrong move. (Some would call that smiling, but Andy knows Pete and knows that smile and Frank is mirroring it with scary accuracy).

Andy touched his own eyebrow, tracing its smooth line where Patrick's is a broken one. Halo fell down. Apparently Pete's 'dusters count as a halo now, because that particular little white line of scar tissue was from Pete and Patrick's first meeting—a permanent reminder of something none of them were likely to forget anyway. Andy supposes the shiny loops of metal/angelic glowing gold might have a correlation in Pete's mind.

Andy raises his eyebrows a little in Bob's direction, and Bob raises his pale set back. But apparently Bob's not interested in breaking this little stare-down up. Andy's not stepping in first, either.

"It's hard out there for an angel, yo," Joe pipes up from inside the van, accompanied by the sound of tape tearing.

Frank's being kind of an asshole, but it's nothing Patrick can't handle. The thing is that Pete and Frank knew each other years ago, and it was one of those things where everyone knew that something had gone down between them, but no one knew exactly what. Not even Andy. Maybe not even anything huge, but something that had left Pete with a permanent aversion to Frank that was, in typical Pete style, right there for everyone to see. When Pete really held a grudge, he held it like a newborn baby, wrapped it up and kept it warm until it was a fully grown up bundle of hatred. His grudges turned into things he couldn't really control—not in the same way as the sharp burning anger that occasionally flared up between Pete and friends, the slow building eruptions of self-hatred, or Pete's general self-destructiveness, the fists smashing mirrors, standard sulking period and apologies with glass tweezed out of knuckles. This thing Pete had with Frank was different. It was a Grudge.

Everyone in this business had a Grudge-with-a-capital-G. Everyone had an old job that went wrong, an old fuck that turned nasty, an old alliance that ended in betrayal—Andy didn't know anyone who didn't have that somewhere in their history, himself included. It was totally understandable; you got burned in this business (and eventually you always did), it tended to be the forever kind of burn, the kind that would scar you to the bone so you'd never forget, livid and raw every time you looked at it. Andy got that, he understood painfully well.

So Andy didn't know exactly what had gone down between Pete and Frank. It was easier not to ask-- leaving Pete's past where it belonged left Andy's past where it did. A mutual silence served them both well-- so long as Pete didn't take his grudge too far, so long as Frank didn't push him too much.

Pete edgy around Frank, while Frank can't seem to stop himself pushing Pete's buttons ever time they're in the same room. Pete's got his game face on and his hand in his back pocket just for Frank being perhaps a little overly forward with Patrick. Pete on a good day would still get in between Patrick and whoever was in his face, sure, but he'd probably joke it off, not tense up and smile like a snarl. Frank isn't doing anything worth Pete's hands going for his back pocket, where he's got one of his sets of knuckle dusters, except that it's Frank.

"Hey Bob," Patrick says, turning his back on Pete and Frank, "you want to give me a hand with some shit from the van?"

"Isn't his name Brent?" Bob asks, arms still crossed and sounding completely serious. Patrick laughs, half real. Andy grins. They seem to come to a mutual agreement to let Pete and Frank have their moment.

When it comes to Pete, Patrick's got the best chance of knowing the right answer to any given Wentzian problem. Andy makes a note to maybe get Bob to tell Frank that he should stay out of Pete's way. Andy hasn't talked to Frank, but most people take Bob's suggestions seriously.

\---

Andy lets his head fall forward and misses the way his hair would have swung into his face now, narrowing his worldview to predator vision, whatever was dead ahead, peripherals fuzzed out and unimportant. It's not long before he's remembering why he'd cut it all again, running his hand through his hair without thinking, getting blood all dried into it, spiking it up and making his scalp prickle. He'd never been able to stop himself getting messy, he just didn't work freakishly neat like some guys. He's always had to use his own hands, no gloves, no masks, no fucking spatter guards and all white alien get-up like a slaughterhouse worker with a bolt stunner ready for make everything as humane and impersonal as possible. He went to work as Andy Hurley, jeans, shirt, his knife and two hands, eyes open and honest and came out of the room Andy Hurley, a little more bloodstained and breathing more deeply, but still honest and open eyed.

He didn't like to use other people's tools, either. Andy hold his knife up, turns it left and right. It's dirty with blood, and actually, needs a good proper clean and polish. Especially since Pete had been playing with it.

"Please," Brent says, "please, please!" Voice raised desperately, but this isn't the time for it. Brent's not going to break yet, he's still functioning enough to beg coherently, still hasn't realised that begging is not going to get him anywhere but back to having a gag. Which Andy slaps back on, ripping tape off the roll, the throwing it back on the table where it clinks against the unused instruments that had been politely laid out for him. Andy takes a breath and stands up straight. He'd always found his work meditative.

"Going after Gerard at his mother's funeral, Brent? The lack of tact, there, man," Andy says, stepping up between Brent's legs. They're taped spread, one to either leg of the sturdy dining room chair. They'd been relegated to the ballroom, hugely high ceilings and a polished dance floor that glints in the low light, the tables and chairs stacked unused against walls. Everything echoes a little, like the room is so desperate to be filled it's making more of the little bit in it, doubling every plea or breath.

Andy turns so his hip is to Brent, picks up Brent's hand and bends it back as far as the tape holding his wrist allows. It's not a particularly painful angle, but Brent tries to jerk away uselessly.

He taps his knife against the back of Brent's hand, then against a his little fingernail, then against his ring finger, and Brent jerks against his bonds again. When Andy taps the knife tip sharply against his middle finger Brent jerks so violently the solid chair rocks up on two legs, teetering for a second, until Andy tugs down sharply on Brent's hand slamming it back to the floor.

"Right," Andy says, "that was where we were up to," and leaves the ruined softness where Brent's middle fingernail used to be and goes back to Brent's ring finger, slipping the tip of the knife under the nail.

\---

Andy steps into the hallway, door clicking shut behind him. He wipes his hand on a white cloth napkin he'd stolen from the ballroom. Maybe there for him, but he wasn't sure they weren't just dining napkins stacked up in waiting like the tables and chairs. He pulls his glasses off and scrunches his eyes closed and open, standing still until the muffled roar in his ears quiets down. It's like coming up from the deep, that place where people rarely get a glimpse that's full of monster things with weird goggling blank eyes and sharp teeth. You go up too fast, you get the bends, your brain freaks the fuck out and shit just goes bad. Andy takes a breath of surface air and centres himself. It takes time to readjust to the walking world.

The corridor comes into sharp focus as he puts his glasses back on, Frank and Bob standing guard against the far wall, and the volume turns back up on Frank's sharply exhaled exclamation.

Frank is in front of Bob, looking up at him. "Fucking fuck! You busted my lip," Frank's wiping his fingers across his bottom lip, which wells spectacularly scarlet the moment his two fingers slide off. He's been hit hard, the split is pretty deep. Andy takes his glasses back off again because this, whatever it is, he doesn't want to get in the middle of, and he'd prefer it too look like he hadn't seen anything he wasn't meant to.

"Feels like you busted my fucking teeth on your hard head," Bob growls through his fingers, caged over his mouth and holding his jaw, fingers prodding at his teeth.

"You're not the one bleeding all over Gerard's hallway," Frank says, licking his lip and poking out his tongue to probe the wound, all a pink blur to Andy's eyes, but he can make out bloody spit hanging off the end of it for a moment before Frank sucks it back into his mouth. It reminds Andy of Pete, the twelve year old boy trick of holding someone down and letting spit hang in their face only to suck it in at the last second. Andy shakes his head. Pete's probably still got the bruises from when he'd tried to do that to Patrick last week.

"How would you know?" Bob mumbles thought the bars of his fingers, white teeth flashing like maybe a smile? Or maybe just bared teeth.

And then Frank snickers, snorts, and outright giggles, breaking the faux tension.

Andy puts his glasses back on and rolls his eyes, taking a deep breath and shuffling his feet for Frank and Bob's benefit.

"What?" Bob says, eyebrow cocked in Frank's direction.

Frank puts his hands up to mirror Bob's, cupping his jaw and covering the lower half of his face.

"Hello, Clarice," Frank hiss-whispers, then makes an obscene sucking noise.

Bob's hands drop from his face quickly, his face going a little pink. He rolls his eyes at the same time as he reaches out and flicks Frank's split lip, hard enough that blood spats against the wall. Frank laughs again, head still turned to the side from the sting in his lip, then abruptly lunges forward clicking his teeth against Bob's and biting at Bob's lower lip as he pulls away, leaving both their mouths bloody with a kiss that looks like an attack.

"You trying to make us a matching set?" Bob asks, low and close to Frank's mouth.

Frank giggles, "are you actually blushing, Bryar? Could you be cuter?" and Andy takes a moment to rearrange his worldview as Bob practically embodies bashful, which, just.

Snap a man in half, face red and snarling and sweating, yeah, sure. Andy can, and has, seen that. Playing footsies and blushing? Not actually part of any memory Andy has of Bob. Bob had been… scarier, then. Now Andy thinks about it, Bob did smile more now, and was less inclined to let his fists do his talking. Though he does attempt to cuff Frank around the head again, but Frank's too fast, skipping backwards with a giggle and a hand on his lip. It's a friendly cuff though, slow and open handed.

Andy thinks about the old Bob, thinks Pete probably would have copped it by now, for nothing more than the dirty looks and ridiculous shit-stirring he'd been pulling about Frank. Andy couldn't actually picture anyone hanging over Bob like Frank has been, years ago and surrounded by the bloodstained ambiance of the cages. This was Bob who stood in Andy's memory as one of the scariest fighters Andy had ever seen, his last memory of Bob fighting was him standing in the middle of the mat, moments after snapping a guy practically in half, his beard longer than it was now, covered in blood like a wolf's muzzle raised out of a deer carcass.

Andy nudges his glasses up and rubs his eyes. This was kind of a headtrip. He clears his throat.

"You get anywhere?" Bob asks, voice containing the last of his smile, turning to face Andy.

Andy seesaws his hand in the air. "He admitted Marc was with him, but we knew that, right?" Brent had been working with a partner, which they'd definitely known, but Andy wasn't sure they knew who yet.

"We got Marc," Frank nods.

"Oh, okay. Well, he's not lying to me then, so," Andy says. About the only useful thing, there, even though Andy hadn't doubted Brent's sincerity at the time anyway. "Where's Marc, then? You want me to," Andy cocks an eyebrow at Bob. "I didn't know—"

"Nah, man," Frank says.

Because obviously, duh, they'd have someone with him.

"So, who's with Marc then?" Andy asks. How long had they had him? Maybe the Way's have got an amateur working, because if they'd had him for any length of time, then they should have some progress, something that meant they didn't really need Andy to be working on Brent. Unless Marc just plain didn't know anything, which was a whole other problem, it'd mean that Brent was probably in the dark as to who hired them too.

"No, it's okay," Frank says, obviously following Andy's train of thought. "Gabe and his got here yesterday. He hasn't been here long, he's downstairs near the kitchens now," Frank says, tone the same as before because he doesn't realise, obviously can't know, that he's just walked the hell over Andy's grave with that sentence. The hair on the back of Andy's neck raises, goosebumps prickle his skin and he freezes for a moment, breath caught in his chest.

"_Gabe_ is here?" Andy finally breathes out, which is not quite what he'd meant to say, or at least he hadn't meant to say it so goddamn quietly, so breathlessly.

Bob shrugs, putting a hand on Frank's shoulder. Frank quirks and eyebrow but doesn't say anything and Andy thinks maybe they didn't notice his massive overreaction. He hopes. But when Bob says, "all the Cobras are here," it's gentle and low, like he's trying not to spook Andy. Andy wants to spit.

"Don't look so surprised, A lot of people are willing to help Gee out," Frank says, either oblivious to Andy's tension or steamrolling over it, "and then of course there's Gabe, who obviously came here because of the thing he has for Mikey," Frank finishes.

"And Pete," Bob adds, apparently unable to help himself.

"And everyone else?" Frank says, laughing.

"So it's a full house now?" Andy asks. He doesn't want anymore surprises.

Frank shrugs. "If there's someone who hasn't answered Gee's call by now, then they're not comin'."

"Their bad luck," Bob says it like a threat and shifts his solid shoulders, managing to make the slight movement menacing.

Fuck, Andy thinks. Which is. That's great news, on one level. The only really important level, and Andy tries to make himself take a breath but he just can't. Facing the combined weight of all the Way's old enemies and whoever pops out of the woodwork to try their luck while Gerard is still establishing himself is something he'd rather do with as many people at their backs as possible, and Gabe and the Cobras are good at what they do. That's rational, that's the facts. It doesn't help the feeling of rats nesting in Andy's stomach, doesn't stop his mouth watering sickly.

Andy turns and walks down the hallway. He should really find out where Gabe's up to with Marc.

"Hey!" Frank calls from behind him, and Andy pauses, but doesn't turn around, "how long you gonna be? Mikey wants Brent done fast."

"Oh, yeah, yep, I'll be back," Andy calls over his shoulder, not really hearing.

\---

This is like some sick fuck version of This Is Your Life. Remember that voice? No? Close your eyes, Andy. Now imagine you can't open them. Imagine a taste sensation: fear, your own blood (you never liked the taste, and he knew it, there was something off about _your_ blood), the taste/smell of something rotten on the back of your tongue, the kind of thing that just can't be scrubbed away, underneath that antiseptic he always used. Imagine chemicals stinging your sinuses and your open wounds. Breathe it in. Listen. That sibilant rustling sound just under your breathe and the humming whir of the heatlamps all along the living warm walls. That's right, Andy Hurley, it's (drawn out like a hiss, naturally) Gabe Saporta!

Gabe Saporta, ex-partner, ex-friend and all around excruciating. They had fucked each other in every way possible. Andy had thought maybe they had stopped, but just the mention of Gabe was like ripping the bandages off unhealed wounds and left him feeling fucked all over again.

Gabe is wiping his hands off on a fluffly white towel that's rapidly turning pink, smiling and laughing something over his shoulder as the door swings shut behind him. Gabe bops down the hallway to his own unheard rhythm, a bouncy wall of poorly thought out clothing choices, in a mish-mash palate of tones that Andy would describe as colour vomit. That's Gabe. Colourful.

Andy feels his heart rate speed up unnaturally fast. He can't stop himself fisting his hands in his pockets, his right wrapped white knuckle tight around his knife, trigger digging into his palm. He yells internally at himself to settle, be cool Andy Hurley. He takes his left hand out of his pocket, but can't bring himself to move his right, even with the thought Gabe knows him, the logic that if he doesn't notice Andy's just plain tense then having a hand on the knife he'd seen Andy use a hundred times might give it the fuck away, doesn't let him move. Andy wants to smack his forehead against the plaster wall until his brain resets to a time before he'd ever felt this particularly kind of cold sweating, rats nesting in your guts feeling around anyone. Except that would involve taking his eyes away from Gabe's looming form, so instead, he just looks up, takes a step back.

"Gabe," he says, putting an arms length distance between them, far enough to swing a knife.

"Andy-pandy! Long time no see," Gabe says. Andy is tensed for it and surprised Gabe doesn't take another step forward to close the gap Andy's made so deliberately. Pushing is something Gabe's never been afraid of, but rather revelled in at every opportunity.

"You've got Marc," Andy says, attempting to keep his tone civil but settling for the tight snappiness that's as close as he can manage.

"Mmm," Gabe hums, not actually an answer, his dark eyes taking Andy in. "You look good, you know." It's not Gabe avoiding just getting on with this and telling Andy if Marc's cracked yet that sets Andy's teeth on edge. It's the proprietary tone, because Andy knows what Gabe's thinking and just _no_. Gabe had delusions of being able to improve a person, in his own special way, delusions that he _helped_, and Andy sees red for a moment because whatever Andy is and however good he looks none of it can be credited to Gabe or anything Gabe ever did. None of it. Never.

Andy thinks _finally_, as he rips his hand out of his pocket and flicks his knife open, and feels a wash of calm come over him. He didn't even know he was waiting to do this, but here it is, and it's just what he's always wanted. For years. Gabe probably isn't even armed at this point, always uses too many tools to carry with him. Gabe's eyes widen, but he doesn't drop his smile, he actually grins wider the sociopathic, egotistical motherfucker—

And Andy's arm is wretched hard by its own momentum as someone grabs him from behind. Andy's leg kicks backwards on autopilot, but his foot hits nothing but air as Joe steps around him in front of him, letting his arm go entirely and holding up his hands.

"Hey, man, what's up? Bob said you'd be down here," Joe says forcefully casual and makes meaningful eyes at Andy, raised dark eyebrows wide blue _calm-the-fuck-down-are-you-nuts._ Andy takes a step back and holds both his arms up in surrender, takes a deep breath like he's willing the adrenaline down, though it does absolutely nothing to calm him.   
Pete is talking to Gabe. Andy hadn't even noticed him come around them in the hall. Pete's hand is around Gabe's forearm, Gabe leaning down intimately, unnecessarily close. Breathing in Pete's words and saying something back, Andy can't quite make out what. Andy distantly hopes it's about Marc, he does actually want to know.

Andy takes another breath, Joe still in directly in front of him and he's actually saying something but. But Andy can't do this. He can't. His arms are still held up in surrender, knife in his right, and it's a fraction of a second for Andy to side-step Joe and let his knife fly.

It thunks hard into the wall, going in on an angle and teetering a moment before falling gracelessly to the floor and taking a piece of plaster with it.

The dusting of plaster floating to the floor snaps him out of it a little, just enough that the red clears from his vision. _Oh, fuck,_ Andy thinks.

"Oh, fuck," Joe says out loud, eyes wide and incredulous. Joe turns to face Gabe and Pete, where Joe's wide eyed _are you insane_ look from earlier is mirrored on Pete's face. It's a deeply strange look on Pete, Andy recognizes it as a bad copy of the look Patrick usually directs at him when he's done something more fucked up than usual.

"Missed me," Gabe says, quiet and sing-song, bouncing on his heels. He actually looks pleased with Andy, the condescension makes Andy's fingers twitch, itching to hold another knife handle.

And in the sudden silence, Vicky-T pops her pretty face around the doorway with a raised eyebrow.

"If I'd been trying to hit you, you'd be on the floor," Andy lies through his teeth. His hands are shaking. Come on, Saporta, let it lie, Andy thinks, and can't bring himself to make an appeal to Gabe to let this one go, even though if he asked politely (begged him, again) Gabe would probably be so delighted by his crawling he'd have forgiven Andy actually hitting his mark.

"Get the fuck out of here," Pete says, uncharacteristically bland.

Andy's doesn't have to be told twice.

"Don't worry, man, he likes Pete, yeah?" Joe says, jogging a little to catch up.

It doesn't make Andy feel any better. He might have just shoved them all into an all out war, when they were already in the trenches.

He has the urge to finish up with Brent. Right now.

\---

Andy is so shaken he doesn't remember he's left his knife until he's already back in the room with Brent. He's blown past Frank and Bob without a word, without acknowledging Frank's hello or Bob's quirked eyebrow. Andy doesn't swear like he wants to, doesn't slam out the door and go back for his knife. There is no stumbling in front of someone here, there is no room for weakness or excuses. Andy doesn't feel weak here, but he resents the empty, wrong feeling of his right hand, the feeling of being unbalanced. Here's another thing Gabe has taken from him. Never fucking ending.

"So, Brent," Andy says, blinking and swallowing dryly, pushing everything from the outside down harder and faster than he normally would. "It's time to spill your guts."

Andy looks at the table, instruments still laid out shiny and perfect on one of the tables that's not stacked against a wall, a crimson table cloth folded under them, perfect and polite and proper and not his, not fucking his at all. They'd been here when they'd first brought Brent in, provided courteously by the family. He curls and re-curls his hands around too-cold steal handles.

"You can choose if that's a metaphor or not," Andy says, giving himself time to choose, giving Brent some time to really think.

He picks up a kitchen mallet, a steak tenderizer, heavy metal and rough peaks and valleys on the hammer end. It shakes in his hand. No. Too heavy.

The scalpel feels like nothing in his hand, like it'll bend against terrified tense pale flesh, crumple under a scream.

He picks up a small surgical saw. Brent makes a strangled grunt behind the tape that's across his mouth. "Perfect," Andy says, and it still feels so wrong in his hands, but you can't look a gift horse in the mouth. It'll do.

"This is going to get really hard when I hit bone," Andy says. He's not just trying to freak Brent out, this is going to hurt enough and the psychological impact of losing a digit is strong enough that Andy doesn't really need to back it up, it's just he's remembered that sawing through bone really is hard. "Just remember, Brent. We can stop any time you want." Andy rips the tape off Brent's mouth.

The pitch of Brent's pained noises rises up and up, with each peak Andy's hands are steadier, his rhythm easier. It's all in how smooth you keep the pressure, how evenly you put the strength into your back-forth strokes, and he hits bone on Brent's middle finger fast. Then there's the dull catching stutter of the serrations on bone, Andy pulls back on the saw hard enough he knows he's chipped into the bone first go, instead of bouncing off, and Brent screams, the noise rising to a primal crescendo that gives way to begging as he falls apart at the seams, voice giving way first.

"Anything, just leave it, leave it, leaveitleavit—" Andy slaps his hand over Brent's mouth and pulls the small saw up and out of the wound, Brent letting out a strangled grunt as it comes loose with a tug. It's messy and ragged, but Brent could probably keep the finger with immediate attention from a doctor. He won't get it, but Andy nods and lets Brent have the illusion.

When Andy pulls his hand off Brent's mouth there's red fingers printed sticky over his bruised face, and Brent immediately opens his mouth and talks and talks and talks.

It feels like a release. Andy sighs, muscles relaxing, leaning his hip against the table of instruments. He takes a breath and listens as Brent talks, watching blood drip slow and heavy off the tips of his own fingers to the plastic covered floor.

\---

Andy sighs happily and wipes his hands on his shirt. That was messy. Sloppy. Too fast. Not entirely unenjoyable.

He feels centred and calm, knows distantly he's flushed red-faced and damp, and the underwater sensation is leaving him slowly, sliding away like someone's pulled the plug on a warm bath he's washed all the bad stuff into, a fluffy towel ready for when he steps out.

"Looks like your shirt's a dead loss, man," Frank points to Andy's chest. He's perched on Bob's back and the hand not gesturing to Andy's shirt is wrapped up tight in Bob's tie, pulling it back over Bob's shoulder.

Andy glances down at his Eat Beans, Not Beings shirt. The cartoon kidney bean looks zombified, its cheerful grin blood spattered manic and its white gloved two thumbs up stained red. Well, fuck, he thinks.

"Well, fuck," he says out loud and it comes out half-laughing, to Andy's surprise. Just another thing Gabe ruined, Andy thinks, and he feels it in a comfortable sort of way where it's far off and muffled inside his own head. What are you going to do? Laugh or snap and cut some guy's fingers off.

"I don't know, I think it looks kind of cool," and if Andy wasn't still feeling soft around the edges, Mikey fucking Way might have just earned himself a knife in the throat. Sneaky fucker. The knife that Andy doesn't have, Andy remembers as he puts his hand into his right pocket on auto-pilot and wraps fingers around nothing. Of course. Andy feels himself sharpen up a little at the thought. _Three two one, you're back in the room_, Andy thinks. He's still calmer than he was, but winces as he wakes up enough that he thinks about what he'd almost done downstairs, again. He'll have to talk to Pete and Joe, at least.

Mikey is leaning against the wall, next to the closed door. He's thin and pretty as always, actually looks better than last time Andy had seen him (he'd avoided him at the cages. Mikey was always at the fights. Everyone knew him and he knew everyone), though that could just be because his hair no longer looks like a nest built by a schizophrenic bird. Mikey's glasses are slipped down his nose to where any normal person would be itching to push them back up from, but as Andy adjusts his own glasses with a flick of his finger, he remembers that that's where Mikey actually wears his most of the time.

Mikey creeps Andy the hell out. Pete on the other hand, Pete loves Mikey, but Andy can't say he trusts Pete's judgement when it comes to self-preservation, because Andy never feels safe around Mikey. Never.

"Did you finish?" Mikey asks, detached sounding, as if the answer doesn't matter to him. He's betrayed by being here at all, though, Andy should by all rights have had to ask Bob and Frank to take him up to see Mikey, or maybe even Gerard.

"Oh, yep. Yeah. He's done," Andy says, and taps the side of his head with a pleased smile that's pretty easy to conjure up, now he's reminded of his success. "I got it." Andy takes a step further back from Mikey, just short of bumping back into the opposite corridor wall. No need to stand all up in Mikey's face, anyway.

"You want us to—" Frank starts, jumping down off Bob's back and taking a step towards the door, but Mikey shakes his head, holds up a hand to stop Frank. Frank looks back at Bob with raised eyebrows, and Bob shrugs—they shut down whatever they're communicating pretty quickly, faces masked empty, but Andy sees uncomfortable worry in the lines of their shoulders. Mikey Way worries even his friends? Andy's not shocked, somehow.

"Frank, you want to take Andy up to Gerard? He'll want to hear it directly," Mikey says briskly. Andy doesn't think he's missed Bob and Frank's silent talk. "Take this up, too," Mikey hands him a tiny digital video camera.

Gabe, Andy thinks, and his mouth twists down to blank again.

Mikey turns to the door.

Andy's not exactly surprised. Pathetically under-skilled hired gun or not, Brent had tried to kill Gerard Way. In front of Mikey. And very nearly succeeded. He wasn't the only one, and Andy thinks he won't even be the only one this week, but he was the only one dumb enough to try to get his shot in right in front of Mikey and get caught instead of dieing mercifully in the attempt.

Mikey swings the door open and there's a moment of silence. Andy thinks maybe Brent's lucky enough to have passed out. Andy had patched him up, though, nothing fancy, but enough so he won't drop dead. Brent's unlucky to the end though, and Andy hears a quiet prayer "no, oh Jesus, please—", choked and full of despair and knowing. Mikey turns around and pushes his glasses all the way up his face. "Thanks, Andy," he says with abruptly focused eyes, and turns toward the inside of the room, letting the door swing shut with a soft click.

Andy feels his lip curl. Mikey Way, creepiest motherfucker Andy can think of, and he's including Gabe.

Bob takes up a sentry position next to the door with his back against the wall, his arms crossed.

Andy heads upstairs still floating a little on getting his information, Frank bouncing along at his elbow.

\---

Back inside their rooms, Andy takes a breath and soaks in the illusion of privacy. It was a good illusion, but still unreal. Gerard was perched on the top floor of the hotel, king of this castle and all he surveyed from it, along with all he surveyed inside it, via security cameras that were visible in most halls. Andy assumed there were also cameras that weren't visible. Gerard was careful like that.

The feeling of home had sunk into their rooms surprisingly quickly. Privacy in the joined suite being an illusion or not, it still felt comfortable here, logic didn't stand up against the warm black carpet under Andy's toes as he kicked his shoes off. It didn't stand up to the subtle smell of PetePatrickJoe. The boy, pot, make-up, oil, weapons, gear and guns smells. Andy walks through Pete and Patrick's room to the suite he shares with Joe, he goes though the bathroom instead of the other door that connects the rooms, too lazy to walk the extra three feet.

These rooms have soaked them in.

The sprawl of Pete's products and eyeliner over the bathroom cabinet, the dotting of pill bottles (pain killers and head meds), empty and half-full, the set of knuckle dusters sitting on the bedside table, Patrick's hats and throwing knives strewn haphazard over his space, the heavy bag of firepower between Pete and Patrick's beds. The dotting of small close ranger weapons, knuckle dusters and knives, all fallen within hopeful range bedside tables or cabinets but still close to being under foot, because Patrick was messy as hell and Pete didn't really help.

The major center of the mess in Pete and Patrick's room is Pete's bed. Patrick's bed is topped with a clump of knotted up sheets and blankets, but it's mostly clear of sharps. Pete hasn't been sleeping particularly well lately, which is to say barely at all, and in any case he didn't like to sleep alone; especially if Patrick's bed was an option.

The room Andy shares with Joe smells a little more strongly of pot than anything else, but it's actually a surprisingly bearable level. Andy wrinkles his nose a little at the bong that's perched on the windowsill and actually wants to be more irritated than he is, and maybe not notice how Joe's left the bong leaning against an open window, the heavy red curtains open against the night sky despite the possibility of snipers and who the hell knew what else, just because he knows Andy prefers not to have to walk into a stale hotbox every time he comes in. Andy smiles and shuts the curtains over the bong and the black sky.

Andy finds himself thankful for the family he's found in Pete, Patrick and Joe. He's never liked the feeling of being bought, of being owned, the notion that every man had his price in cold hard cash. It was kind of hard to avoid that feeling in this business. Andy had floated through a lot of stuff before he hooked up with Pete. He worked for the Ways, crashed and been burned with Gabe, done more dirty, odd, fucked up jobs than he could remember. He'd even briefly had job at Burger King. Andy Hurley's glamorous life, everyone. He'd floated and sunk bobbed to the surface again, and after Gabe, he'd found himself back in Pete's orbit. It was after Pete had met Patrick, there was something different in Pete that made Andy stick around. They needed Andy's skill set to get places, and Andy found he wanted to help, wanted to be there more than anything when he hadn't wanted anything for a long time. It had been a natural progression, no attempt to buy him.

By the time Pete had asked Andy to stay it wasn't really a question. Andy woke up one morning and found he had no more back-up plans, no more fingers in pies, had robbed the Burger King with Pete and seriously didn't want to go back anyway, hadn't had to talk to irritating connections or ex-friends for months, and realised that this was it: Pete, Patrick and Joe were there to catch him. The feeling of being tied to them was paradoxically completely freeing. It was the only moment Andy could remember in his life that he felt was unreal, like he was living out of a movie, when he'd had a moment of realisation like an electric shock: he'd found his place. Nothing would take it now. What they'd made was worth more than his life.

The door slams in the other room and Andy hears it fill up to the high moulded ceilings with familiar voices.

Andy's feeling okay at this point, okay enough he doesn't wait for them to come to him but walks back through the messy bathroom to talk to them about Gabe.

\---

Andy didn't lie to Pete, Joe or Patrick.

They all knew he had history with Gabe. Details were devils, or something like that, and Andy had told them what they needed to know and nothing more. Still, it was enough, enough that the reprimand Andy knew he deserved didn't come.

Pete's looked less angry than kind of hurt that Andy hadn't asked him to come down there in the first place. Joe made a fake-whispered offer to kill Gabe for Andy, and when he turned his head Patrick quirked an eyebrow in Andy's direction in what Andy knew was a perfectly serious offer, because Patrick could, actually, make it happen. Even here. Patrick was that good. Of course Pete had explained to Patrick what happened, already, and Andy's thankful for Pete's inability to keep things from Patrick right now. After a happy pause where Andy just let himself imagine saying yes to Patrick's offer, he shakes his head no.

"Thank you," Andy says.

He hugs Patrick when he hands him back his knife, and Pete attempts to tackle them both across a bed, but fails miserably when Patrick rolls them out of the way. He lands on top of Andy and smiles that special oh-Pete smile. Andy smiles up at Patrick as he disentangles them, and scoots to the edge of the bed to glance down at Pete, he's landed between beds in a sprawl of potentially dangerous clutter, covers and cursing.

\---

Friday night at the Way hotel has a routine that stops for no war.

Andy files out of the elevator after Pete, and rubs his eyes. He can't say he really understands exactly why Pete did take an hour and a half to get ready, or why most of that was dedicated to flat ironing his hair more than once so it looked… exactly the same as it did when he spent the minimum ten minutes on it. Andy kept his mouth shut, because saying that out loud might just end in tears and then Pete would have to re-do his eyeliner and they'd never actually get into their seats. Andy suppressed his snort of laughter at the mental images.

"Fashionably late," Pete says, smoothing his hair unnecessarily.

They're all decked out in their finest, Patrick actually donning fedora instead of his usual cap.

Under the hotel, navigating through stark concrete corridors, Andy feel at home. They're here because the show must go on, and in the subterranean levels of the Way's hotel, the show does. Everyone is being checked at the doors both above ground and below, even allies, so they're stopped by a foreboding looking Bob and a keyed up looking Frank.

No one is under any illusion that this is safe, inviting people in like business as usual. It works in Gerard's favour, if he's aiming for this to be a show of strength. Andy thinks it's actually a good move. No faltering calf legs slipping in the mud and balking at the wolves snapping their jaws as it tries to keep up with Mommy. Gerard just keeps running on through the gauntlet, taking the uncertainty head on.

Andy grins and bears Bob patting him down as Bob asks the routine questions. Then Bob reaches into Andy's right pocket and pulls out his knife. Andy stops himself from turning around and taking it back, Bob scary as hell Bryar or no. He keeps still.

"Okay," Bob says. Andy takes his hands off the wall and turns around expressionless, feeling his face flush uncontrollably. He's not seriously keep— in a room full of people who could—and fucking Gabe—

But meeting Bob's eyes, there's a smile around their edges and Bob slips his hand in his pocket, then slaps his apparently empty hand into Andy's, a casual sleight of hand, handing the knife back between their palms.

"It's for show, Hurley. Don't want those without special privilege to know there is one," Bob says quietly, flicking his eyes towards the hallway that's filling with a loose crowd of people, most of them looking like they're not used to being kept waiting.

"Nah," Andy says, smiling his relief into the word.

"Have you got any concealed—" Bob starts, hands already on Pete's hips, pale on his painted on black jeans.

"I'm totally just pleased to see you," Pete interrupts, rolling his hips. Bob's hands smooth over the inseam of his pants fast and unfazed.

"You stole my line, man," Joe says, and turns to the wall.

Pete gives a loud porn-fake moan as Bob finishes trailing his hands up the outside of Pete's pants, over his hips. Joe laughs and Andy covers his mouth and doesn't smile around his eyes. He's hearing Pete but he's watching Frank direct Patrick against the wall.

"You're a comic fucking genius, Wentz," Frank says in a way that suggests the opposite rather strongly. He's crouched down behind Patrick, facing Pete, hands on Patrick's ankles.

Bob finishes and Pete straightens up, instead of answering Frank he just smiles his craziest grin. Andy puts a steadying hand on Pete's shoulder and waits for Frank to finish patting Patrick down—there's no removing Patrick's weapons and handing them back like Bob had done to Andy. They'd be here a week if Frank had to do that with half of what Patrick's normally got on him.

Frank lingers a couple of seconds too long on the insides of Patrick's thighs, casting ridiculous appreciative glances at Patrick the looking up at Pete smiling. Pete practically vibrates under Andy's hand with how hard he tenses up. Andy pinches the nerve in Pete's shoulder as hard as he can, hoping to stop Pete engaging Frank, doing exactly what he wants. Frank couldn't have picked a quicker way to piss Pete off than fucking with Patrick.

"All done," Frank says, and smiles all teeth, right at Pete. He winks as Patrick turns to face them.

Patrick just shakes his head at Pete, smiling like it's okay, but he doesn't look like Frank's lingering went unnoticed, even as his body language yells at Pete to let it go. Patrick's cheeks are pink as he brushes past them. Andy's hand falls off Pete's shoulder as Pete turns and chases after Patrick.

"I don't know why he's even doing pat downs," Joe says, "he's in the main match, man."

"Gerard doesn't trust anyone else, I guess, and Bob can't do everyone alone," Andy says, nodding. It was totally fair enough, but Andy's thinking if Gerard had seen Pete and Frank together he'd have let someone else do pat downs with Bob while Frank was pre-fight jittery and Pete was. Pete.

\---

Andy follows Pete and Patrick into the room, Patrick leading with Pete so close behind him he's standing on Patrick's heals occasionally, near tripping him, pressing himself up to Patrick's back. Patrick shrugs in on himself tightly, irritated, but lets Pete rub his face against his shoulder without any painful consequences.

Andy's pleased Patrick didn't blow Pete off in a huff, because that would have resulted in Andy and Joe having to deal with a sulking Pete. When Andy looks back at them Pete is kissing Patrick's neck lightening quick and then dancing away, looking entirely too pleased with himself. Andy just hopes whatever Patrick's said or let Pete get away with won't bite them all in the ass later. Andy shakes his head to clear it of the mental images—he's shared close quarters with Pete and Patrick way too long, he thinks.

After the tense grey claustrophobia of the corridor, walking into the fight room is like letting out a breathe Andy didn't know he'd been holding.

Gerard has invited a select host of politicians, fat cat rich guys with their toys. There are people with enough influence to be useful and people with enough money to be bored of everything but the bloody, dirty, secret things that go on down here in the ring, the things you can't get in the everyday world—they're the worst of the crowd, Andy thinks, but they're the bread and butter of this business. It makes a kind of sense that with blood in the water the irritating parasites come along with the predators. Then there is a slew of who are categorized by the possibility that they might be trying to kill Gerard behind his back, but are perfectly civil to his face. Some people Gerard has invited solely to see if they'd turn up—not turning up would be a sign of bad intention, at least giving a vague idea of who Gerard should be looking out for. It was an idea made better for Gerard knowing one name in the room that had already taken a shot. Andy mentally polishes his fingernails on his shirt, not half bad if he said so himself—and he did, but it was nice Gerard had said so too.

Across the room shaking Gerard's hand is Janice Benoit, who had hired Brent and Marc. She must have some balls, to stand there perfect and prim and surrounded by so many people who would kill her for what she'd done, without a bead of sweat on her brow. Then again, she has no idea what Gerard knew.

The rest of the crowd is made up of the private pseudo army of the alliances Gerard has made for himself.

It's been a long time since Andy's seen this place, and it hasn't changed much. The sturdy metal chairs aren't as chipped as he remembers, covered in shiny new black paint and there are red carpets rolled down over the stairs between the sections of seats. Everything else is as it was, the fluorescent lighting leaves everything unshadowed and seeming more naked that it is, washed out and pale. The amphitheatre style seating borders the ring on all four sides in rising tiers. People stream down the blood red carpets, stepping off onto the industrial cold of the concrete to get to their seats.

There's a kitchen off one of the corridors at the back of the room, locker rooms, a bar and the medical bay Andy can remember spending long, sticky hours in, the inky rainbow of his arms stained in red and pink tones, patching people up or taking them apart. Sometimes just ripping tape off a real to keep dead eyes shut. It still smells the same, but most of these places do, cheap cleaners and stale blood buried somewhere in the stains on the ring floor that never come out. Of all the jobs he'd ever worked before finding Pete, Patrick and Joe, this had been the best. Nothing really rated against what he had now, but this had been something he could say he'd almost enjoyed.

They head down red carpeted steps to their front row seats. Being first in to answer Gerard's call had benefits.

They're seated right behind Bert McCracken's corner. He's got someone of his in the ring with Frank tonight. Bert himself is over talking to Gerard, leaning into Gerard conspiratorially. Bert's people must have arrived late, maybe even tonight. Pushing the limits is a McCracken thing, from what Andy hears, especially when it's a bad idea. Andy thinks about Bob saying if people weren't here yet, they weren't coming, their bad luck.

Gerard is directly across from them, behind Frank's corner. He's holding court and looking the part. Pale and groomed, his black hair washed out blue by the fluorescent light. He looks kind of prettily dead with his eyes ringed in smoky make-up that brings out the tired dark under his eyes like it's a statement, not the unavoidable payout of stress and fatigue. Ray Toro wanders up to stand nearby, shaking more hands than Gerard himself, impeccable in classic black-tie, his hair pulled back into a fluffy ponytail.

Gerard notices Andy looking when Bert finally drifts a little away, and Gerard gives them a little finger wave and a tiny toothy grin. Andy can't think of any word for it but _sweet_, and vows never to mention that to anyone who might tell Gerard. Gerard is spectacularly weird, sometimes. Andy grins and waves back.

Andy's never had any real desire to get into the ring. He prefers to watch. Seeing the ring again from this angle, close enough that he feels like he's vetting again, makes him feel nostalgic for it. If he had to take up something he'd done before, he'd be back down here, breathing in the sweat and blood, chin in hands watching guys take each other apart. Andy takes a deep breath and holds it. It's not the same, it smells like they've scrubbed over the place with something industrial, but there's still a faint smell of something. Fear, adrenaline, whatever's staining the floor of the ring that'll never ever come out, it's still under there. It's kind of pleasant to sit and wait for the match to begin without having to think of what he's going to have to sew up or if anyone's gonna need put down at the end of the night. It's nice to know he can get the fuck out of here, go lay in his warm bed and jerk off afterwards.

Andy watches the guy in Bert's corner get ready. His back is to Andy, facing into the ring, bouncing on his toes keeping his stretch warm or tamping down nerves. He's not a big guy, probably not far off Andy's own height. It's good, because he's fighting Frank, and it looks like they're relatively even on the scales—which counts for something, though for less than people usually think. Andy has never seen this guy, but the company he keeps speaks for his skill level too. At least Andy hopes it does, because if he's anything like Bert McCracken he will put on a fucking amazing show. Andy had seen Bert fight in the ring and cage here before. Bert is one of the most intense cage fighters Andy had ever seen, hypnotizing and feral, like a car crash you can't take your eyes away from. Andy had seen him have to be dragged off guys in the ring, and tear a guy's throat out in the cage-- which sounds like a metaphor, but definitely isn't. Bert also plays the crowd like an old fiddle, taunts and jeers and spitting and declarations of love and thrown down from the ring, played on like a stage.

Andy has spoken to Quinn once or twice. More than he'd ever spoken to Bert. There'd always been something kind of cold about him that Andy hadn't ever gotten through. Quinn liked Bert. That was about it, as far as Andy could tell, Quinn and Bert's heads were constantly together.

It kind of sets Andy's perception on its head as he watches Quinn sling his thin scarred arm over this new guy's shoulder, talking quietly in his ear. Andy tunes out the chatter around him as best he can, and catches snippits.

"Win or tap out, Jepha," Quinn says, not unpleasantly for the abruptness of it. Not as coldly as Andy expects.

"It's Frankie, Quinn. Frankie," Jeph says, then 'mmms' exaggeratedly with a soft kind of smile that's a little dazed and bruised looking around the edges.

"Exactly, he's a fucking freak. Win or tap the fuck out before he fucks you up. We need you functional."

"Yeah, I'll be sweet—"

"Jepha, seriously."

"Quinn, seriously." Jepha parrots back and laughs— and it's a weird name, Jeff with an a on the end. Andy finds he wants to say it out loud as soon as he hears it.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Quinn says, like this is an old conversation Andy's stumbled into and he can't quite follow, but it has a comfortably worn feeling to it. Quinn's tone reminds him of Patrick's angry impressed indulgent mix when he's asking Pete not to do something completely dangerous that might actually work. Patrick might snap and kick Pete around occasionally, but it's the kind of kicking he only gives Pete. You don't work that kind of threatening-hopeful-resigned tone with someone you don't care about.

Frank walks down the carpet on the other side of the ring and the crowd surges with appreciative applause—Frank is obviously known and liked here. Andy spares a glance at Pete, who is staring violently at Frank, trying to burn a hole in him with his white hot sulking. Patrick's hand slides across Pete's thigh, and Pete glances away from Frank. Andy lets out a breath. He ignores Frank and his fanfare and watches Jepha's shifting back, the unevenly buzzed hair that's short and dark on the back of his neck, but appears to be unevenly coloured red and blonde at the sides. Andy's eyes flick to Quinn. Quinn is looking bitchy.

"--If I need to," Andy hears Jepha say when the applause, catcalls and excited chatter around him ebbs briefly. "It's almost as if you think I don't know my own limits," Jepha says.

"This isn't the time for _your_ limits," Quinn says, "let's go with I-will-be-able-to-move-tomorrow as the limit, okay?"

Jepha doesn't reply. He rolls his hand on loose wrist a few time, a 'yeah yeah yeah' gesture and then crack his knuckles, fingers laced together and bent back. He touches his toes a few times then bounces up again. It's kind of dorky, and Andy both admires the view and wants to laugh at the same time.

Quinn shakes his head despairingly and points at Bert, who is lazing over Gerard, apparently acting like a monkey, laughing. Bert glances back at them and frowns, a manic smile slipping off like it was never there, arms hanging limp and apelike at his sides for a moment. Bert abruptly straightens up and makes a heart with his hands, thumbs and pointers together and then waggles his hand in the air. It takes Andy a second to get that he's miming tapping the mat. There's another guy lurking body-guard like around Bert who gives Jepha the thumbs up with both hands while pulling a face, making Jepha laugh.

Jepha smiles wide and surprisingly sweet and strips his shirt over his head.

Tattoos. Andy has seen tattoos. He _has_ more than most people he knows. Usually he takes a kind of club-member nodding interest in people who have tattoos anywhere near as extensive as his. Even if most of them are uninspired, dull or tragically clichéd. But Jepha's tattoos are intriguing, colourful and weird. Andy finds himself wanting a closer look at whatever the hell that is on Jepha's neck, it's one of the most tender areas to get tattooed and his is absolutely covered and—Jepha's pulling off his pants, revealing disgustingly 70s-gym-class dark brown and tan shorts. There's a smattering of laughs around, Pete's standing out the loudest, and Andy smiles but still can't take his eyes off the tattoos. There's tattoo on the top of Jepha's thigh and unless Andy's glasses have suddenly stopped working, it's a severed unicorn's head. Andy's mouth twitches and he kind of wants to laugh again because who in their right mind would have that on them? His hand half twitches with the urge to touch.

"Jesus Christ those shorts," Joe says, as if Andy hadn't seen him wearing pyjamas just as revolting and just as short.

"I'm getting that tattooed on my _face_—" Pete says gleefully.

"Might be an improvement," Joe shoots back.

"Is it a unicorn?" Andy asks.

"I was talking about the typewriter, man, on his stomach," Pete says and laughs honkingly a few times.

"Glass houses, Pete," Patrick says.

"It's more a pile of shards at this point," Pete shoots back. "Come on, Patrick."

"Okay, that's a fucking hideous tattoo. Almost as bad as having, like, a sleeve dedicated to Nightmare Before Christmas or something," Patrick says and Pete cackles.

"You wound me, Pattycakes," Pete says, bottom lip puffed out sadly. "All those times you said my tattoos turned you on?" Pete says innocently, wide eyed and tragic. "That's a charming shade of _busted_ you've gone there, Patrick," Pete adds, back to his normal insufferable tone.

"I'll give you busted," Patrick says, quietly, and with a serious smile.

"Shut the fuck up, Pete," Andy says before Pete opens his mouth again. The fight is starting. The lights go out all around them, like this is a good piece of theatre, all the light is focused on the ring, the stage, and the players, the fighters. The cage stays down, this is a friendly match—it means that two people are going to walk out of that ring. Well, if not walk precisely, two people will be breathing at the end of the fight.

The focus of the lights leaves not much visible of the crowd, except the people immediately around the ring on all sides, but only dimly. Andy catches Mikey stalking the isles once or twice out of the corner of his eye, never in the same place.

The fight starts with brief introductions given by Bert and Gerard together.

When he looks over later, Bert is back to his own seat and Mikey has settled next to Gerard. Mikey's got his head on Gerard's shoulder and his long legs tangled with Gerard's. Gerard is playing with Mikey's hair absently, twisting one longer side bang around his fingers. Andy's annoyed to feel relieved knowing Mikey's not creeping around in the dark, anymore.

Andy can't keep his eyes on them, watching them is… unsettling. It's something that's stronger than the usual feeling of creepy vacancy he gets from Mikey and he feels itchy-dirty watching—Mikey and Gerard are weird separately, but they're weirder together.

On the other hand he can't keep his eyes out of the ring. Jepha. Andy can't say he's going to forget that name quickly, or the fact that they're sharing a building for the next— however long Gerard needs them.

\---

Tap out, Quinn had said, and Jepha doesn't. Jepha's not losing spectacularly, but he's not going to win. Andy doesn't think he wants to win. There are openings Andy sees him see and miss. It's strange. It's intriguing, and Andy doesn't realise he's not actually blinking enough until his eyes start to sting and he has to rub his eyes behind his glasses.

It doesn't help that Frank is spectacular. Fast and hard and morphing from the smiling, bouncy guy Andy had met into another person, like something that had been held tight inside him, bouncing against the walls, had been let off the leash and was violently happy to be free. But despite wanting to see him fight since he'd met him, Andy finds he's spending less time than he'd thought he would taking in Frank's style and playing with the idea of how Frank and Bob would work as a team. Andy can't take his eyes off Jepha, lithe colourful body, muscles twisting in pain and Frank lashes out animal fast and clips Jepha's ear. Jepha goes down with a satisfied bloody smile on his face.

Frank's mouth is wet and twitching like a predator catching the scent of prey. His eyes are dark and fierce, his face is different with the fight, not bloodied at all, except where he's rubbed his knuckles against his cheek and smeared red from Jepha's face on himself.

Jepha's on the floor—up on his elbows with his bangs hanging dark in his face, hair a little longer than Pete's, just long enough you could wind it around your hand. Just long enough you could get a really good grip.

Frank takes advantage of it almost the second Andy thinks it. Frank straddles Jepha's back and grips hair white knuckle tight, smashes Jepha's face into the canvas, Rorschach blots in red morph with each thump of Jepha's face into the mat. Jepha takes what Frank doles out like he's grateful, the wet smack of his face on the mat offering something beatific on his face on the upswing, the line of Frank's tensed tattooed arm elevating something that shines through Jepha's red tinged smile.

Andy gets a flash of how it would be to pull that hair himself, Jepha's head back and neck exposed like on Frank's upstroke, using the grip to hold him down as he fucked him hard—and damn. Damn it. Andy's dick twitches.

It's half the way Jepha takes it. Just takes it. He's compelling. The bloody little Mona-Lisa smile as his eyebrow busts open on the mat. His face red and zen-like as Frank eases up for a second, taking a deep open mouthed breathe and readjusting his grip. Jepha takes his time before he rolls them over. Hunched over with fists raised, crushing tattoos across his body the way he's bending forward, straddling Frank's stomach a little too high for comfort and dripping blood into Frank's eyes between sloppy punches, swaying dizzily.

Frank digs his fingers into Jepha's hip, gets his other hand out from under Jepha's knee and into his face, grips hard and Jepha pauses Frank's fingers sunk deep into his skin on his hip and his cheek just for the second it takes Frank to buck him off. Jepha's elbow thrown wild behind him connects with Frank's face in the scuffle, and Jepha is on his feet first, breathing hard.

Frank's mouth is slack and wet, the cut on his lower lip reopened by Jepha's elbow, the blow cracking it hard and wider. It's first blood for Jepha. Frank shakes his head sharply, scrunching his eyes open closed open.

Jepha gives Frank room to get up. Andy had wondered, for half a minute, if Jepha was one of those guys who had to be told to tap out because their ego was big enough to get them killed, stubbornly clinging to a fight that was already over. The worst kind of idiot. But. Jepha wasn't one of those guys. Jepha liked this, and he didn't care if he won or lost—to Andy's eye, he was even pushing for a loss, enjoying taking what Frank was handing out, not taking openings that even Andy noticed, and he can acknowledge that if he's seeing the openings, they must be obvious. Andy makes a note to ask Pete or Patrick about it, if he's seeing something there, they have to be. They both read fights like text, and as much as Andy likes watching, the fine print is usually all Greek to him.

Frank's on his feet and spitting red through bared teeth, shifting his weight back-forward in quick succession, shaking his hands out and shaking his head a little, clearing it. Jepha smiles and touches his lip in the same place Frank's has split again, his fingers come away bloody. He says something and Frank says something back but doesn't wait for a reply before swinging at Jepha's face. Open and smiling and no hands come up to deflect the punch. Jepha goes down and takes swipe at Frank's legs on his way.

"You want to close your mouth, Hurley?" Pete jostles Andy with his elbow. Andy jumps, snatching his hand off his own inner thigh like he's burnt himself. He hadn't noticed his hands wandering, and feels his face flush warm.

"Fuck off, Pete," Andy says, and adjusts his dick in his pants. Which may not be the best comeback he's ever made, but it's effective enough, considering he's handicapped by his blood deciding to relocate south.

Pete jabs his elbow in Andy's side again with a laugh, but he's looking back at the ring already, half a big toothed smile and a set of deepening crowsfeet facing Andy.

Andy looks back to see that Jepha's finished—tapped out? Bell rung? Andy didn't notice and Pete really deserves his ass kicked for that.

"Goddamn it," Andy says, and pokes Pete in the side as hard as he can. Pete huffs out a breath and a laugh.

Frank's smiling feral and victorious on his knees in the center of the ring.

Jepha's got a hand on the ropes right up in the corner of the ring, but fails at pulling himself up, and lets himself slump back on his side, breathing hard but looking happy enough. His face is turned towards Andy and Andy finds he can't look away when Jepha catches his eyes—they stare, Andy doesn't know how long for, before Frank's up on his feet and easily nudging Jepha over onto his back with his shoe.

Frank turns his head in Andy's direction, pupils blown and face dripping he drags his slack features into a small, dirty smile that looks more like the Frank Andy's seen outside the ring, only more focused, intense. It takes Andy a second to realise that Frank's actually looking at Pete, next to Andy, and in that second Frank pulls his head back to let fly a mouthful of blood and spit, aim actually kind of impressive for the distance, as Pete's legs get spattered and his jeans rapidly soak in a spray of dark stains.

Frank looks down at Jepha and says something, then smiles like he's tied whatever was let out back down, and when he laughs he looks free.

Andy turns in his seat to stare at the stains on Pete's pants a little wide eyed, he kind of wants to laugh because _Jesus_, that's fucking harsh, but winces instead when he looks at Pete's face. Pete's let his head fall forward with the scowl, darkening his features, his fingers are curled into his too long sleeves white knuckled. Joe is leaning over Patrick and talking in Pete's ear, but Pete shrugs his shoulder hard up down until Joe backs off. Joe raises his eyebrows at Andy and Andy thinks, yeah. When this blows up between Pete and Frank, it's going to go nuclear.

\---

Pete's still scowling every time he glances down at his jeans, which is pretty much constantly, as he hasn't really taken his eyes off the ground on the way back up to their room except to take a few more verbal jabs at Andy about his gaping at the fight. Patrick and Joe are still downstairs shaking a few hands and hopefully telling Gerard to put a leash on Frank before there's blood on the walls.

"How did you even work with that for so long if it gets you hot, Hurley?" Pete says, knuckles tapping the deep red hallway wall as they walk.

"Fuck off, Pete," which has apparently become Andy's default response, this counting as the fifth time he's said it in the last ten minutes. Whatever, Pete doesn't deserve originality right now. Pete's actively being annoying and childishly mean, his narky bitch tone coming out through a curled upper lip. Andy knows that when Pete's pissed off he can never stop himself, always leaves a trail of collateral damage, but that doesn't stop it being annoying as fuck. It's easier not to even acknowledge what Pete's saying. Pete knows he's spouting bullshit just to annoy Andy, Andy knows it, and he's not going to rise to it.

It's not as if they haven't had this conversation before. Andy's job doesn't turn him on. There's a vast difference between someone screaming and loving it and someone screaming because they're not.

Which is not to say Andy isn't fascinated by both, he just doesn't get hard hurting someone who's not enjoying it. There's something about the capacity to take pain (or the inability to) that never stops fascinating Andy. Pain is as complex as pleasure, it's just that not many people spend as much time on the former as they do on the later. Andy's spent plenty and he knows there's nuance there.

There's people who crack when you give them so much as a paper cut and then there's people like Jepha. Polar opposites. Not even opposites, different species entirely.

Andy's wondered occasionally if his attraction to people who like pain is driven by the curiosity for something incomprehensibly different, something exotic, something he doesn't understand. If Andy's honest with himself, he'd say he's a one-paper-cut-to-crack kind of guy. He doesn't like pain. So people who can take it and beg for more are sort of amazing to him.

Andy's drawn out of thought by Pete wanting attention. Pete grabs onto a light fitting, ugly gold metal leaf shapes protruding from the wall, barks out an obnoxious laugh and attempts to pull himself into a chin up on it. It cracks half out of the wall and hangs sadly from loose wires, while Pete lands in a crouch on the ground, wobbling a little but keeping his feet. _Pity_, Andy thinks, wishing it had dumped Pete on his obnoxious ass.

Andy shakes his head and keeps walking. He can babysit Pete, but there's pretty much no way he's going to be able to stop him for breaking something. At least it wasn't Frank's head. Pete jogs to catch up.

"You don't want to fuck _Frank_, do you, man?" Pete says, and when Andy looks behind him Pete's mouth is twisted disgustedly, but his eyes are wide like that would seriously fuck with him. Pete's sensitive. Andy sometimes finds that impossible to explain to people (particularly anyone who's actually met Pete, especially when Pete's on an upswing), but when Pete does get hurt, it cuts him to the bone.

Andy says nothing, just smiles.

The look on Pete's face is perfect, but Andy can't bring himself to actively lie to Pete, even when he deserves it.

"Oh, man, your face. Of course not," Andy says, knowing he's dooming himself to a hell of Pete's "Andy's got a boyfriend" chants when Pete gets it. Pete always finds a way to back you into a corner with things like this, where you end up telling him or giving him whatever just to get him to shut the fuck up. Andy's going to have to ask Patrick for lessons in not giving Pete what he wants all the time, because Patrick's the only person he can think of that's got that down to an art and the scars to prove it.

Pete crashes through relief to anger to amusement in a deluge of expressions that would be amusing if he didn't settle on something that screamed I-get-it with too many predatory teeth.

"Jepha Howard!" Pete crows.

Andy files that away for later, it saves him asking. Even if he's never going to see the guy again, it's nice to give a new bit of fantasy a title. Andy waits for it—

"Andy's got a boyfrieeeeeend," Pete sing-songs terribly out of tune and right on cue.

"Fuck off, Pete," Andy says with a sigh.

"You want to kiss him you want to huuuug him you want to fuccck—"

Andy pushes open the room door and lets it shut in Pete's face. Pete catches the door with his foot, undaunted.

\---

Pete doesn't bother to flick the lights on in his room before he flops down on what is technically Patrick's messy bed, back to petulant after the teasing. Andy makes his way to his and Joe's room to let Pete sulk in peace.

The thunderous sounds of what seems like millions of windows shattering right next to his head hits his ears like a physical blow while he's in the bathroom taking a leak. He tucks his dick in his pants quickly and is thankful he didn't bother switching on the bathroom light.

Andy slides the bathroom door open a crack and peeks out. The curtains have been ripped off the wall, and glass glints across the carpet in the moonlight. Three men strand strangely hesitant in the middle of the room, dressed fully in black, nothing of them visible under black uniforms, bullet-proof vests and balaclavas, except their eyes behind clear goggles.

Andy pulls his knife out of his pocket and flicks it open in the semi-silence, the click of it locking open noticeable to Andy's ears even with the crunching of glass under heavy boots and harsh breathing. Still no one moves.

"Holy shit," Pete says, petulance shocked out of his voice and replaced with happy surprise. He jumps off the bed and shoves a hand in his back pocket and pulling it out with his fingers glinting metal. He readjusts his grip a few times around the knuckle dusters, and glances briefly past the men in Andy's direction, nodding almost imperceptibly in acknowledgement. "Awesome. Just what I felt like, guys, how did you know?"

Muffled, but distinct, Andy hears one of the guys parrot back: "Holy shit."

The guy next to him glances wide eyed through goggles at the first guy, then croaks out in a muffled voice much like the first: "Wrong fucking room."

Pete laughs sharply and Andy feels his eyes widen. Holy shit indeed—they must have been after Gerard.

The first guy just shakes his head and raises his gun.

"Do it!" the guy with the gun yells over his shoulder, and aims at Pete. Pete ducks out of the way as the guy fires off a shot. It speeds up after that, Pete hitting the ground and taking the guy down with him, kicking his legs out from under him and smashing his goggles with a metal capped punch. Pete shoves his knee across the guy's throat and rips the gun out of the guy's slack hand as the guy scrabbles at his own eyes, trying to pick the shards of goggles out of them. Pete looks back over his shoulder, ready to roll out of the way, but the second man is fumbling his holster and can't get his gun out.

The third guy steps closer, cursing, and attempts to help but one step forward brings him half a foot from the bathroom door and Andy's knife runs across his throat before he has a chance to scream. He goes down halfway through cursing "fucking sticky fuck holsters—," pumping blood and flailing, arcs of wet spattering the holster fumbler and the walls and Andy's clothes—that's two shirts in twenty-four hours, jeez.

Andy kicks the still twitching body away from in front of the door, and pulls it open wide. On the ground Pete's had enough time to smash in the face of the guy on the floor with a few well places metal enforced punches, he's either dead or passed out, because Pete's up and wiping his face with the back the hand holding the guy's gun. Pete tosses the gun onto the bed behind him. "Come on, motherfucker," Pete says, bouncing on the spot.

The holster fumbler gives up on his gun with a curse, spins back forward between Pete and Andy, then glances at his friends on the floor.

"It's not your day, is it?" Pete says, bending his fingers back to crack the knuckles of his bare left hand against his the metal on his right.

Andy takes a step back. If Pete wants to take this one, he's more than welcome. This is not Andy's thing. This is giant neon signs flashing "you're mortal, Andy Hurley" right in his face, and he doesn't particularly like the adrenaline feeling, the way his heart pounds, the way this isn't calm or controlled. Chaos is only interesting in theory.

The guy comes at Pete with a desperate yell, pulling a knife from his boot, large and flashing as he raises his arm. It's a hunting knife, big and unwieldy, but awkwardness doesn't stop it being sharp enough to kill Pete if they guy can get a swing in. The guy barrels forward and swings his arm, Pete dodges out from under it, benefiting from being at least a foot shorter, lands a punch with his metal covered right fist hard under the guy's arm. The guy grunts in pain but keeps his head enough to shove Pete up against the wall with his momentum, practically falling into Pete, shoving his free hand at Pete's throat and ending up with his knife buried in the wall next to Pete's head. Pete grabs the hand at his throat, holding it back just enough to keep himself breathing as they guy tugs with his free hand at the knife.

Andy steps forward, ready to rip they guy's head back by hair and balaclava and bury his knife in his neck. The guy won't hear him, locked to Pete like that. It'd be a quick and easy end to this… except he meets Pete's big dark eyes over the guy's shoulder, lined in black and easy to read: back off. Pete's free hand comes up glinting with metal in the semi-dark and waves Andy off.

Andy takes a step back, dubious about Pete's ability to make a smart choice here but not too interested in getting into the fight again, easy end or not.

The guy finally works the knife out of the wall, and Andy winces and regrets not just cutting the guy's throat. Pete's duster hand comes up to catch the knife and misses spectacularly, his unprotected palm wrapping around the knife's blade. Pete holds on, no choice now the move is made, and Andy takes a step forward to help but sways back almost immediately as Pete shoves the guy hard. Pete uses the little leverage he has and picks his legs up to wrap around the larger man's waist, struggling and putting him off balance. They go tumbling to the ground, Pete landing on the bottom with a choking gasp of air shoved out of his lungs.

"Goddamn it," Andy says, under his breath, because he's going to have to step in if Pete doesn't get the fuck off losing side of this situation soon. Really soon—

But he's stopped mid thought as the door bursts open, not broken down, but shoved hard enough it bounces against the wall. Patrick steps into the room and flicks on the lights, Andy squints in the sudden brightness of the room. Patrick's got his gun in hand, as he steps forward and puts his left hand behind his back under his shirt where he's always got knives strapped. Andy lets out a breath.

"Patrick!" Pete says, teeth gritted in a tense smile that would be enthusiastic as hell if he weren't trembling with exertion, staying wrapped around the guy to keep him from stabbing Pete in the face. As it is, the guy jerks his head and catches Pete hard on the chin, hard enough Andy hears Pete's teeth click together.

"Motherfucker!" The guy yells.

Pete makes a growling face with lips pulled back and teeth bared, they're pink like he's bitten the inside of his own mouth. His arm shakes where it's wrapped around the knife, there's blood trickling through his fingers and over the metal between them, but he hasn't let his grip loosen.

"Freeze!" Patrick yells, loud and harsh, and in the moment between the Pete stopping dead with a red smile and closed eyes and the guy realising he should be doing anything but that, Pete's upturned face is spattered with a mist of gore as the back of the guy's head explodes over them both in a brief gory shower.

Andy feels his shoulders come down, breathes out and clicks his knife shut and walks to the bed that's still strewn with Pete and Patrick's stuff, pulling the neat covers off so everything falls to the floor, and sits down heavily on it, bouncing a little.

Pete opens his eyes and disentangles himself, wincing as he pries his own hand open off the hunting knife, shoving the limp body off himself in one rolling motion. He lays still on the floor a moment before flipping up onto his feet, entirely too bouncy.

"Hi," Andy says, nodding to Patrick, who nods back.

"Holy shit," Joe says, poking his head into the room and surveying the carnage with wide blue eyes.

"That's what I said," Pete replies distractedly. "Patrick!" He adds as he stumbles forward to lay his head on Patrick's shoulder. Andy pretends not to notice Pete's half hard in his jeans-- he's known Pete long enough that he's fairly sure he's used every snarky comment, it's almost too easy anyway as that's Pete's default response to Patrick doing anything involving guns, knives, fights or winning. "My hero," Pete says, the laughs into Patrick's shirt.

Patrick holsters his gun.

"The fuck, Pete? I could have blown your head off," Patrick says, but doesn't move to get Pete off him. "Get the hell off me, Pete," he adds, which means Pete doesn't actually have to worry about permanent damage, or getting the hell off Patrick. It's when Patrick stops talking to Pete that there's real trouble, occasionally of the permanently scarring kind.

"Aw, we had it all under control," Pete says. "I trust you."

"You're getting blood on my shirt," Patrick replies flatly, one hand creeping down Pete's back to brush the top of his jeans waistband, the other pulling Pete's bleeding hand gently off his chest to get a look at the cut.

"Well, Mommy and Daddy are going to go have some alone time now. You kiddies have fun with that," Pete puts on a condescending tone that's probably supposed to be maternal and sweet, and gestures at the glass and blood and chaos that is Pete and Patrick's room. He pulls Patrick towards the door to Andy and Joe's room by Patrick's grip on Pete's injured hand.

"You don't want me to take care of that hand for you before?" Andy asks, knowing what the answer will be.

"I got it," Patrick says. He can't stitch quite as neat as Andy, but Pete's hand may not even need it. Andy shrugs.

"Okay then, I'm going to go find Bob," Andy says, "or whoever. Clean up this mess. Uh, tell the tale." Andy flicks his eyes from Patrick's hands to Pete's overly happy face. "Good luck," Andy salutes Joe.

"If they don't know by now, I'll eat Patrick's hat," Pete shoots over his shoulder.

"Gotta go now," Andy says.

"Gee, thanks, man," Joe says, grimacing exaggeratedly at Andy. He brightens abruptly. "Just stay off my bed!" Joe yells loudly as the door clicks shut behind Patrick, then cackles at Andy's expression of dismay.

"What?" Patrick says, popping the door open again.

"I said stay off my bed," Andy says, latching onto the opportunity before Joe can open his mouth again.

Patrick laughs in a manner that's not entirely comforting anyway, and pushes the door.

"He said why are you making me wait, _Daddy_?" Pete bad motherly voice carries through before the door clicks shut.

Patrick's voice echoes Andy and Joe's loud "Jesus Christ," with an added muffled "seriously, what did I say about that, Pete?" just from Patrick.

Andy shakes his head at Joe.

"That was low, Hurley. Really low," Joe says, as if he hadn't started it first.

"You started it," Andy shoots back.

"Whatever, man, you're sleeping in there, then. When this shit's cleaned up I'm pushing those two beds together and having a well deserved sprawl out, bitch," Joe eyes the beds speculatively, miming pushing them together with his fingers. "And if they— on my bed-- I'm going to hide Patrick's hats. And Pete's eyeliner. All of it. Hide it right off a bridge."

"I should go find someone," Andy says, turning towards the door with a smile.

"You really think no one noticed—" Joe starts.

"Oh, we noticed," Bob says from where he's standing in the doorway, glancing around the room before he tucks his gun back in his waistband. "The hell?"

"I didn't do it," Joe says, holding his hands up in surrender.

"Me either," Frank says, walking into the room behind Bob, slow and subdued, face patched here and there with white, but grinning into the bruised edges. He gestures expansively with his gun, "well, I thought I'd better say. People always assume—"

"Correctly," Bob puts forwards.

Andy does not ask how Jepha is, but he does abruptly remember his wistful thought about having time to jerk off before floating to sleep in his nice comfortable bed that was completely unsoiled by Pete and/or Patrick.

"Pete and I got back up here, opened the door, and three guys came through the windows," Andy says. "Professionals, but idiots. I think they were aiming for Gerard's room, but that's speculation. That's all I got," he finishes with a shrug. Andy tracks Bob picking his way delicately across the room towards the doorway to the adjoining room.

"I've really got to thank you and Gabe," Frank starts, shoving his gun into the back of his pants, and starts picking at the butterfly bandage on his lip with his fingernail, casually thoughtful. "And Benoit, she kept a lot of bad company."

"Kept?" Andy asks. "Past tense?"

"Well she's not keeping any good company where she is now, I guess," Frank says, shrugging. He gets his hand batted away from his lip and the tiny white bandage stuck back down with a poke of Bob's finger.

"Stop picking at that shit, it's been on ten fucking minutes," Bob snaps. "Anyway, yeah," Bob directs at Andy, making his back a prime target for Frank's poked out tongue. "Mikey might be possible to live with, now. You wouldn't believe what people fucking with Gee does to him," Bob says.

I probably really would, Andy doesn't say, and is extra glad he's mostly avoided Mikey. If he'd been worse than normal, Andy doesn't even want to know.

"I think they might believe it," Frank says, cocking his head to the side with a smile.

"Whatever," Bob cuffs the back of Frank's head gently, barely rustling Frank's hair. "Anyway, thanks," Bob says, and walks over the closed door that separates the rooms.

"Oh, well, it's my job," Andy says, mouth twitching into a smile he can't resist. He ducks his head.

"You might not want to go in there," Joe says, abruptly. Bob's hand freezes over the door handle.

"What? Is it really bad? Worse than in here?" Frank says, eyebrows raised as he walks over to Bob at the door, sounding excited.

"Oh, it's just. Pete and Pat—"Andy starts and is thankful when he's cut off.

"Jesus Christ," Bob says, getting the door six inches open and slamming it shut as Andy speaks.

"Well they're probably just patching Pete up _so far_—" Joe starts, eyes wide and innocent.

"So they came in through the windows, yeah? Our people are on the roof now, but I'm thinking maybe we should send someone across the street too," Bob thinks out loud, talking deliberately over the top of Joe, while Joe trails off smiling. Bob steps forward and pokes his head out the gapingly open space where the windows were, looking up and down the building's side.

Andy looks around at the glinting glass and billowing piles of curtains. He nudges a corpse with his toe. It groans. "Oh," he says quietly and smiles, "this might help?" He adds a bit louder.

It's the guy Pete had knocked out first, and he groans wetly and rolls onto his side to cough up a mouthful of blood and a few teeth. When he finishes retching and looks up, Bob and Frank are holding their guns towards his temples.

"Hi," Andy says, stepping over this guy's body, one leg either side of his hips. The guy looks up with one eye wide, one scrunched shut and bleeding sluggishly behind his shattered goggles. Andy leans down, knife in hand, to look him in his good eye. "So, um. I'm just going to ask you a few things—"

\---

**Note:** Brent is an OC, not actually the former bassist of PatD, as I learned he was called Brent after I wrote this. He's also not anyone else in bandom called Brent, if there are any others. I'm just bad at choosing names like that.


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